Graduate Placement

Graduate Placement

The table below provides a complete record of graduate placement outcomes beginning in AY09–10. Data are for any/all students who have applied, successful or not, for further academic study based on their MA degree. (Unless otherwise indicated, results are for doctoral admissions in Philosophy, and included full funding.) Not listed are students that opted not to pursue academia beyond the MA. A note about placement from 1988–2008 follows. For additional information, see our Alumni page.

Year

Thesis or Writing Sample

Placement

2017–2018

The Basis of Moral Values

PhD, University of Connecticut

2016–2017

Absence Causation in Mechanistic Explanation

PhD, University of Colorado

2016–2017

An Empirical Look at the Transparency of Perceptual Experience

PhD, University of California San Diego

2016–2017

Scientific Realism and the Geometric Structure of Physical Theories

PhD, University of Minnesota

2014–2015

Overcoming the Present

FT Lecturer, Cal State San Bernardino

2014–2015

Tracing and Offloading: A Neo-Lockean Reply to Johnston

PhD, University of Kansas

2013–2014

The Doxastic Conception of Delusion

PhD, University of Wisconsin

2013–2014

Comprehensive Exams

PT Lecturer, Long Beach City College

2012–2013

Comprehensive Exams

JD, Loyola Marymount

2012–2013

O’Connor’s Agent-Causation Theory of Free Will

PhD, University of California Davis

2011–2012

Blameworthiness and Manipulation

PhD, Purdue University

2011–2012

Dirty Hands, Virtue Ethics, and Consequentialism

PhD, Syracuse University

2010–2011

Nietzsche as Cultural Physician

JD, University of Southern California

2010–2011

The Role of Intuition in Philosophical Theory Construction

PhD [Psychology], University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

2009–2010

World-Making, Exemplification, and Film Adaptations

PhD [Cinema], University of California Los Angeles

2009–2010

A Defense of Mackie’s Error Theory

PhD, University of Western Ontario

2008–2009

A Defense of Donald Davidson’s Dissolution to the Problem of Global Skepticism

PhD, University of Utah

2007–2008

Back to the Future: A Modern Natural Law Understanding of the Alien Tort Claims Act of 1789

PhD, University of California Irvine

A review showed that 127 MA degrees were awarded during the period 1988–2008. Although some data is incomplete, a (conservative) review revealed the following results:

58 of the 127 graduates chose to apply to doctoral programs.

53 (or 91%) of these 58 were admitted to a doctoral program.

45 of these 53 were admitted to a PhD program in Philosophy, and 7 were admitted to doctoral programs in other disciplines (e.g., Law, Education, Film Studies).

30 of the 45 admitted to a PhD program in Philosophy (67%) were admitted to one (or more) of the top-fifty PhD programs in the United States (as ranked by The Philosophical Gourmet Report).

Of the 69 graduates that chose not to apply to PhD programs, at least 21 (or more than 30%) went on to teach Philosophy as Full- or Part-time Adjunct Professors or Lecturers at various universities and community colleges around the United States and Canada.